Well, unfortunately my son has now been formally diagnosed with asthma. We thought it might be coming as he had one previous asthma attack, but this last one had us at the hospital. It was so scary to see him struggle to breath for so long with his puffers providing little to no relief. he is doing better now but the Dr. was saying that Asthma goes along with the eczema (which are son had since about 2 months old) and severe allergies.

This all made me think how many of you or your children with severe food allergies have asthma as well? What flares up your asthma and what do you do to help prevent attacks? Does your child care his/her puffer at all times like his/her epi-pens?

Any tips that you can offer to someone who is new at dealing with a child with asthma would be appreciated. It also made me think that maybe there should also be asthma and eczema sections on the forum if there are a lot of other dealing with these other issues as well.

Thanks for any help in advance! As always it is much appreciated to have a resource of other parents dealing with the same issues.

Sincerely,

Jodi
(mom of Zachary age 2 who has eczema, asthma, severe dairy (including contact), sesame seed and fish allergies and has to avoid peanuts/tree nuts and shellfish).

I've moved this thread to the Environmental allergies and Asthma forum.

Our daughter was diagnosed with asthma when she was about 12 months old after two asthmatic episodes (scary!). By then we were already dealing with food allergies to dairy and egg. I found the asthma harder to get a handle on.

I could avoid the food allergens but I seemed to have more difficulty with her asthma. She is a poor perciever. She doesn't seem to notice that it's getting harder to breathe. Her symptoms would be crying, clingyness and wanting to be carried. Other than the crying, these were similar to her personality. We had many asthma attacks...

We keep all of her asthma medications, her spacer device and her extra auto-injectors in a fanny pack. This goes to school with her in her backpack, when we are out either her father carries it or I do in another backpack along with wipes and a safe snack (I can't convince him to carry her pink backpack!). It pretty much follows her around the house come to think of it because it is beside her bed at night time.

I have learned over the years that one of her triggers is a cold so with the approval of her Dr, I increase her controller medication at the first sign of a cold. (check with your Dr before making changes to your prescription)

There is some good information from the Lung Association as well as Certified Asthma Educators available to answer your questions.

thanks for the reply. i thought there would probably be a lot of the allergy kids who also suffer from asthma. i'm now cheering on for a cure for allergies and asthma!

The article link is very interesting, thank you. It makes me wonder how good is the quality of air in our tightly sealed energy effiecient home??? Is there testers on the market, like the one that they mentioned they used in their study that we can buy? And then if you find out that the air is bad, who do you improve it? Ironically enough we are in the water testing business but air quality I don't know much about so it would interesting to learn.

We've purchased a fake christmas tree this year for the first time to try and help with avoiding any flare ups. With your daughter you mentioned it came on very rapidly with little warnings, Zachary seemed to be the same way. Th Dr. said that we should start to give him his medicine at the first signs of a cold (runny nose), but since he has a continuous runny nose and teary eyes it's going to be hard to tell when that is. Actually the Dr. said those symptoms are actually environmental allergies which could include dust, trees etc. so therefore we then want to avoid general items like that but without knowing his exact triggers makes us wonder how to do that. Did your daughter get tested for general environmental allergies at a young age or have to wait until she was older?

It does seem like the asthma is going to be a harder one to control unlike the food allergies. I actaully was trying to educate him now that he's turned 2 more about his allergies and making sure he doesn't take food from any of his friends, to just say 'no' to food or else it can make us sick and we have to use our epi-pen and go to the hospital. I guess that part of how to explain all this to our children is a whole other issue!

I checked out the lung associate site as well. there ad about asthma was very interesting. so much to learn about! Anyways, thanks Susan for the insight I really appreciate it.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum